pzw Posted April 29, 2019 Posted April 29, 2019 I am looking to replace 3 OrangePi boards with a H3 CPU with one board. Every board has a RTL-SDR USB stick attached to it, and the software tends to load up the CPU a lot on at least one core, in some cases the total load is high on 2 cores. To make it all easier / simpler I would like to replace the 3 with one board with enough processing power, but nothing extreme. The goal is that it will be in an enclosure up the antenna mast, POE fed, so not easily accessible! I even looked at the Atomic Pi, but I am not so sure about processing power in that unit.. (I might be wrong though!) Browsing the options online, I saw the NanoPi M4 which looks like a good candidate to me. Another one is the Odroid-N2, but there is no armbian support for it (yet). Without a doubt I have missed good candidates, therefore my question to the community... Anyone with a good suggestion? Anything H2/H3/H5 will not do it performance wise I think. Maybe a H6 based board? Thanks in advance for your time and help! :-)
NicoD Posted April 29, 2019 Posted April 29, 2019 Hi. You seem to have done your homework well. Those are indeed all the most powerful boards. But other needs are important too. Like how much ram do you need, is power efficiency an issue? Does your task scale well over multiple cores? What voltage do you want it to use? For example when ram isn't that important you could go for the smaller NanoPi NEO4 with the same Soc as the M4, but only 1GB ram. But good cooling is needed with that. The NEO3 is even a bit more powerful with 8 cores of 1.4Ghz. But single core performance is a lot worse. Power consumption is then again better than the RK3399's. There's also the NanoPC T3+ with that SoC, but a bigger footprint and 2GB ram. The Odroid N2 is the most powerful of all in CPU power. It does need a higher voltage than the others. It's very new and not super stable yet. But I've tried a new Armbian image today on it and it seems to be better than anything else for it. Too early to know. The H6's are pretty powerful for a quad-core sbc. Also very new and software isn't ready. It needs sufficient cooling to get the most out of it, but it's doable. I see the PineH64 model b becomming a good board. but that has 2.4Ghz wifi vs 5Ghz wifi of the Orange Pi3. I've got most of those boards. And the overall best board is the NanoPi M4 for me. Very fast, stable, good Armbian software, great connectivity. It does consume the most of all when maxed out. Or the Odroid XU4 is also a very powerful board, octa-core. But hard to cool. I hope that helps. 1
pzw Posted April 30, 2019 Author Posted April 30, 2019 Hi @NicoD; Thanks for your reply, it did help for sure. To answer some questions; - 1 GB should be enough I think, but if I can get for a small extra fee 2GB I would be happy. - Power efficiency is not a big thing, same for voltage. Whatever it needs I can supply. (Using active POE, which allows a lot of options :-) - Physical size is not important, as long as it is not the size of a PC! haha Some remarks / questions about the boards you mention...: NEO4 --> Not enough USB connectors. I would like to avoid an "external" USB hub NEO3 --> Can't find it. But the description you give points me to the Fire3? But same thing, not enough USB connectors. T3+ --> Enough USB connections! :-) You mention the lower per core performance. How can I compare it to a "H3" core? It is also one of the more expensive ones, basically the same as the M4. Which one will perform better? Reading your post I think the M4 will be the best choice so far. Maybe someone else has another option?
NicoD Posted April 30, 2019 Posted April 30, 2019 7 hours ago, pzw said: How can I compare it to a "H3" core? It is also one of the more expensive ones, basically the same as the M4. Which one will perform better? Reading your post I think the M4 will be the best choice so far. Maybe someone else has another option? For some tasks the T3+ is faster. But only tasks that scale well over multiple cores like Blender. Most applications don't do that well and prefere a better single core performance. I indeed menth the Fire3. Too many names. That should be the most powerful for a low price, but indeed not much usb ports. You mentioned the Atomic Pi. Could be a valible option. It's cheap, x86 and very fast for that price. I once made a list of benchmarks of most of my sbc's. It is confusing since there ain't no perfect benchmark tools(and I wanted to show discrepencies). But it gives an idea of what you can expect. 7 zip, single core scores are important(small core-big core). Multi-core doesn't give exact results(not 100% se). Igrnore gtkperf, gimp and sysbench. I only used that to show it was useless. The H3 performs a bit worse than the Rock64 at 1.3Ghz. I should have added one, I've got enough of them but don't like them much except for light data server. You can perform the 7-zip tests yourself on the H3. Install p7zip-full, then 7z b (multicore test) sudo taskset c 0 7z b (single core) I only use decompression numbers since I do not want to mix compression with decompression and get a number of nothing. I also still think the M4 is the best choice. The only sbc that never had issues, and I use it daily. Spoiler Reasons why benchmarks can be misleading ---------------------------------------- throttling 32-bit/64-bit Difference in cores A53/A7/A15/A72 distro (ubuntu/debian...) distro version kernel version driver versions compiler version software version/outdated repositories desktop Mate/Xfce/LXDE/... display resolution/headless background processes cpu clockspeed ram clockspeed/latency ram useage/swap/zram process sheduler optimizations for the system/distro crypto engine for encryption Undervoltage config settings Wifi dongle CONFIG_HZ=250 - 1000 or any other 7-zip works a bit better on 32-bit vs 64-bit, it doesn't use all cores at 100% in multi-core scores. The percentage differs with different distro's and boards. So it's not completely exact. Blender works a lot better on 64-bit than on 32-bit. It uses 100% of the cores. Sysbench works 10x better on 64-bit, different versions give different results. Version 1.xx does the test 10s and gives the amount of events. GIMP only uses 1 core, works better on 64-bit. GTKPerf tests desktop speed. Works 10x better on 64-bit. It only uses 1 core. CPU Miner only works on 64-bit. Works better in Ubuntu Bionic than in Debian Stretch. Blender : BMW render @ 1080p Gimp : BMW render result 1080p Filters -> Artistic -> Van Gogh -> ok Sysbench : sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 --num-threads="number of threads" run 7-zip : Numbers are average of 3 of decompressing only All tests are done with a fan when necessary so no throttling occurs. NanoPi M4 Blender 1h08m28s 59°C SBC-Bench 64-bit SBC's Odroid N2 |SBC bench result |CPU Miner |7-zip s/c A53 |7-zip b/c A73 |7-zip multi avg. of 3 |Blender |GIMP |GTKPerf |Sysbench Ubuntu Bionic http://ix.io/1Brv 11.35kH/s 1564 1879 9988 50m28s NanoPC T3+ |SBC bench result |CPU Miner |7-zip s/c |7-zip b/c |7-zip multi avg. of 3 |Blender |GIMP |GTKPerf |Sysbench Armbian Bionic http://ix.io/1iRJ 10.99kH/s 1290 10254 1h10m25s 1m24s 10.11s 21692 Arbmian Stretch http://ix.io/1qiF 8.55kH/s 1275 10149 1h13m55s 1m32s 11.06s 3.2s Rock Pi 4B |SBC bench result |CPU Miner |7-zip s/c |7-zip b/c |7-zip multi avg. of 3 |Blender |GIMP |GTKPerf |Sysbench Ubuntu http://ix.io/1uVr 9.50kH/s 1242 1818 7802 1h17m22s NanoPi M4 |SBC bench result |CPU Miner |7-zip s/c |7-zip b/c |7-zip multi avg. of 3 |Blender |GIMP |GTKPerf |Sysbench Armbian bionic hz1000 http://ix.io/1nLh 10.23kH/s 1335 2005 8352 1h13m50s 0m29s5 5.06s 26763 CONFIG_HZ=250 http://ix.io/1BLW 10.45kH/s 1335 2007 8320 1h08m28s Armbionic@1.4/1.8 hz250 1253 1828 7821 1h12m52s Armbian bionic nightly http://ix.io/1pDo 10.24kH/s 1329 1990 8292 1h13m28s 0m29s 5.12s 26733 Armbian stretch desktop http://ix.io/1odF 8.66kH/s 1350 1977 8400 1h14m12s 0m31s 5.24s 3.1s Armbian stretch dsk nightly //ix.io/1pM0 8.80kH/s 1359 1993 8500 1h15m04s 0m31s 5.32s 3.3s Armbian stretch core no fan //ix.io/1pKU 8.80-8.65kH/s 1353 1989 8461 Armbian stretch core //ix.io/1pL9 8.76kH/s 1354 1988 8456 Armbian stretch core nightly //ix.io/1pLf 8.82kH/s 1357 1994 8494 Lubuntu Bionic arm64 http://ix.io/1oGJ 9.24kH/s CPU Miner 1056 1551 6943 1h28m13s Lubuntu Bionic armhf http://ix.io/1pJ1 1111 1769 7705 2h02m54s 0m57s 6.97s 1666 32-bit Lubuntu Xenial armhf http://ix.io/1oCb 989 1507 6339 2h20m51s 0m59s 49.77s 49.7s 32-bit Khadas Vim2 Max |SBC bench result |CPU Miner |7-zip s/c |7-zip b/c |7-zip multi avg. of 3 |Blender |GIMP |GTKPerf |Sysbench Ubuntu Xenial http://ix.io/1qkA 6.86kH/s 823 1134 6682 1h14m39s 1m53s 16.26s 3.8s 7-zip only 600% of 800% used Odroid C2 |SBC bench result |CPU Miner |7-zip big core |7-zip multi avg. of 3 |Blender |GIMP |GTKPerf |Sysbench Armbian Stretch Core http://ix.io/1pZu 4.65kH/s 1390 5342 Armbian Stretch Core Nightly //ix.io/1pZJ 4.66kH/s 1391 5340 Armbian Stretch Desktop http://ix.io/1q1C 4.65kH/s 1394 5363 1m23s 11.66s 5.96s Armbian Stretch Desktop NGHT //ix.io/1p02 4.59kH/s 1394 5356 2h38m18s 1m23s 12s 6.0s Meveric Stetch No-OC 1337 5223 2h40m00s 1m25s 10.41s 5.99s Meveric Stretch Only RAM OC 1361 5292 1m25s 5.99s Meveric Stretch OC 1548 6049 2h14m17s 1m14s 8.80s 5.24s Ubuntu Mate Bionic http://ix.io/1q2S clocked to 100Mhz 2h35m10s 1m17s 10.01s 12026 Ubuntu Mate Bionic OC Doesn't work/Clocked to 100Mhz 1607 5960 2h10m21s 1m09s 8.94s 13755 Rock64 |SBC bench result |CPU Miner |7-zip small core |7-zip multi avg. of 3 |Blender |GIMP |GTKPerf |Sysbench Armbian Stretch 1.5Ghz http://ix.io/1nCj 4.06kH/s 1406 5407 3h00n32s 1m39s 15.91s 7.0s OLD Armbian Stretch 1.3Ghz //ix.io/1iHB 3.80kH/s 1211 4904 Armbian Bionic 1.5Ghz core //ix.io/1qbK 5.00kH/s 1384 5379 10.0s Armbian Bionic 1.5Ghz dsk //ix.io/1qcb 4.94kH/s 1379 5326 2h55m56s 1m31s 15.00s 10172 32-bit SBC's Odroid XU4 |SBC bench result |7-zip s/c |7-zip b/c |7-zip multi avg. of 3 |Blender |GIMP |GTKPerf |Sysbench Debian Jessie http://ix.io/1q6X 950 1653 8823 1h12m19s 1m08s 18.53s 41.3s Ubuntu Bionic http://ix.io/1qbL 1219 2094 9395 1h44m19s 1m10s 14.36s 2200 Asus Tinker board |SBC bench result |7-zip big core|7-zip multi avg. of 3 |Blender |GIMP |GTKPerf |Sysbench Tinker OS 9.5 Stretch http://ix.io/1pRN 1983 7536 2h55m00s 1m19s 189.82s 63.7s Raspberry Pi 3B+ |SBC bench result |7-zip small core |7-zip multi avg. of 3 |Blender |GIMP |GTKPerf |Sysbench Raspbian Default no fan http://ix.io/1q10 1471 5027 2m09s 9.85s 88.2s Raspbian Default http://ix.io/1q1Q 1411 5371 5h47m31s 2m09s 10.04 79.5s Raspbian OC http://ix.io/1q5J 1591 6141 1m55s 8.81s 70.8s Ubuntu Mate Xenial http://ix.io/1q65 7-zip didn't work 2m17s 11.71s 90.5s Software versions ----------------- GIMP Blender GTKPerf SysBench SBC-bench M4 : Lubuntu Xenial armhf 2.8.18 2.79b 0.40 0.4.12 0.6.1 Lubuntu Bionic armhf : 2.8.22 2.79b 0.40 1.0.11 LuaJIT 2.1.0-beta3 0.6.1 Armbian Stretch desktop 9.5 : 2.8.18 2.79b 0.40 0.4.12 0.6.1 Armbian Bionic : 2.8.22 2.79b 0.40 1.0.11 LuaJIT 2.1.0-beta3 0.6.1 Tinker : TinkerOS 9.5 Stretch : 2.8.18 2.79b 0.40 0.4.12 0.6.1 Odroid C2 : Armbian Stretch 9.5 : 2.8.18 2.79b 0.40 0.4.12 0.6.1 : Ubuntu Mate Bionic : 2.8.22 2.79b 0.40 1.0.11 LuqJIT 2.1.0-beta3 0.6.1 Doesn't work clocks to 100Mhz Meveric Stretch 9.5 : 2.8.18 2.79b 0.40 0.4.12 Doesn't work Rock64 : Armbian Stretch 9.5: 2.8.18 2.79b 0.40 0.4.12 0.6.1 : Armbian Bionic : 2.8.22 2.79b 0.40 1.0.11 0.6.2 RPi 3b+ : Raspbian Stretch 9.5 : 2.8.18 2.78a 0.40 0.4.12 0.6.1 Ubuntu Mate Xenial : 2.8.16 0.40 0.4.12 0.6.1 Odroid XU4 : Debian Jessie : 2.8.14 2.72b 0.40 0.4.12 0.6.1 7-zip doesn't work : Ubuntu Bionic : 2.8.22 2.79b 0.40 1.0.11 0.6.2 NanoPC T3+ : Armbian Bionic : 2.8.22 2.79b 0.40 1.0.11 0.4.6 Armbian Stretch : 2.79b 0.40 0.4.12 0.6.2 Khadas Vim2 Max : Ubuntu Xenial : 2.8.16 2.76b 0.40 0.4.12 0.6.2 CPU Clocks ---------- Odroid N2 : Ubuntu Bionic : 2x1.9Ghz(A53) + 4x1.8Ghz(A73) 64-bit NanoPi M4 : Armbian Bionic/Stretch : 2x2Ghz + 4X1.5Ghz 64-bit Lubuntu armhf/ARM64 : 2x1.8Ghz + 4X1.4Ghz armhf 32-bit / ARM64 64-bit Tinker Board : TinkerOS Stretch : 4x1.8Ghz 32-bit Odroid C2 : Armbian Stretch : 4x1.5Ghz 64-bit Ubuntu Mate Bionic : 4x1.5Ghz RAM 912Mhz 64-bit Ubuntu Mate Bionic OC : 4x1.75Ghz + RAM 1104Mhz 64-bit Rock64 : Armbian Stretch : 4x1.5Ghz 64-bit Armbian Bionic : 4x1.5Ghz 64-bit RPi 3B+ : Raspbian Stretch : 4x1.4Ghz no fan 4x1.2Ghz above 60°C 32-bit Raspbian Stretch OC : 4x1.570Ghz over_voltage=4 core_freq=500 sd_freq=510 32-bit Ubuntu Xenial : 4x1.4Ghz 32-bit Odroid XU4 : Debian Stretch : 4x1.4Ghz + 4x1.9Ghz 32-bit : Ubuntu Mate Bionic : 4x1.5Ghz + 4x2Ghz Underclocks when above 75°C 32-bit NanoPC T3+ : Armbian Bionic : 8x1.4Ghz 64-bit Some benchmark tools can give an estimate of the performance. But they are never an exact reflection. Can't use sbc-bench on the Tinker Board in Elar Xubuntu bionic and Armbian Bionic. Too high system load. Even when booting into core. Armbian Stretch on-board Wifi stops working about one minute after boot. Can't connect to router. Wifi dongles give a lot of system load, so SBC-bench doesn't start. 1
pzw Posted April 30, 2019 Author Posted April 30, 2019 @NicoD; Thanks for all the info. I think I made the decision to go for the M4. 1
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